Came across this blog - report back by an American after his visit to South Africa as part of the Joy of Jazz Festival in Cape Town .... have to agree!!

My Excellent South African Adventure
by Arthur Gilroy

South Africa SMILES!!!

I did not go there expecting to see what I saw.

I was amazed. Here is a country not even 15 years out of apartheid. A country with huge problems. Crime. Immigration from other, less stable surrounding countries. Rampant poverty. An AIDs epidemic. A huge drug and alcohol problem. Competing ethnicities with centuries of hostile history. An entrenched, largely racist white establishment that still holds most of the money.

And what did I see? Besides ample evidence of all of those things?

I saw this.



Over and over and over and over again.

Read on.
I saw it on the street.



I saw it in the audience. (I was playing at a Johannesburg jazz festival.)



I saw it flashed out of school busses.



I saw it EVERY DAMNED WHERE!!!



From women. From men. From children. From white people AND black people.

Hope.

Confidence.

Happiness.

Look for smiles on a city street in America.

Smiles like this.

Nope.

Everyone with whom I dealt, from festival administrators and sound engineers through friends that I made and on down to waiters, waitressess and people working at coffee concessions...all competent, relatively happy and taking care of some serious business on an almost Scandinavian (if a little looser) level.

And party?

Check this out and try to find it in any American city.

A new friend...a fellow musician, a white South African who had been old enough to understand both the evil of apartheid and revel in the joy of its end...had picked me up at my hotel on my one day off and given me a guided sociological tour of the city and its history. He was quite perceptive, and opened my eyes to many things. On the way back to the hotel...I had to be back for a 9:30 PM pickup to go play at 11PM...we hit a really heavy traffic jam. Saturday night on a fine six lane superhighway. (Three in each direction, with big service roads on each side.)

So there we are. talking shop and stuff, surrounded by what appears to be endless cars and a big, long distance-style bus. There's a lot of music coming out of a lot of cars, and people are beginning to get out to see what's happening up ahead. We're not paying much attention. I'm not worried about getting back in time; I've still got a couple of hours.

Suddenly out of nowhere a tall young white guy wearing what looked to be a party zebra or cow suit...white with black spots and stripes, little ears, a tail, the works...lopes on by with a sh*t-eating grin on his face. Like out of a Fellini movie if Fellini was a little sillier. Then people start wandering up and down the line of cars...mostly white, but with all races mixed in...holding beers and laughing. It's a rugby crowd, and the local team seems to have won. The party is ON!!!

Simultaneously, a black taxi driver gets into a beef with someone...I never quite figured out who...and starts prowling between the cars with what looks like a billy club in his hands and apparent murder in his eyes. I take my seat belt off and prepare to take care of business if I must, but nobody else seems to pay him much mind.

Then several of the male partiers bolt from a car, stand at the edge of the road, drop their pants and start taking an obviously much needed, beer-inspired piss directly at the traffic going the other way, and accompanied by much laughter from any number of cars, bend over and moon the world before they return to their companions. Meanwhile, the runner in the zebra suit is doing his thing, again to many cheers and and an equal number of proffered beers.

This is LOOSE, brethren and sistren.

LOOOOOSE!!!

Harmless, too. All in good nature.

(unfortunately, link to article no longer working